If you've been to theater in Dallas-Fort Worth in the last two decades, chances are you've seen the work of actor, director and designer Jeffrey Schmidt. You're about to see his work even more often, starting Jan 1. That's the date he starts as the new permanent artistic director at Theatre Three, the Board of Directors announced Monday.

He will continue the company's 55th season in a role that has been filled by Bruce R. Coleman on a temporary basis after the death of company co-founder, executive producer and director Jac Alder on May 22, 2015.

In many ways, the choice of Schmidt, 43, suggests an outreach to a younger and more diverse audience. Schmidt stresses that his long relationship with the theater gives him a unique sensitivity to the needs and interests of its longtime patrons. At the same time, one of his first moves will be to have the company join the national Theatre Communications Group and join the national conversation about what theater can and should be doing.

"The thing I am most excited about is being the bridge from what this theater has been to where it will fit into the landscape of the future," Schmidt says on the phone.

Schmidt will be hitting the ground running. The company traditionally announces its new season in January. Plus, he's on board to direct the company's next show, Laugh, by Pulitzer Prize winner and Southern Methodist University alumna Beth Henley.

"I'm reading plays like a mad person," he says, noting that he's looking for a balance between traditional and daring choices. While everything will continue as planned, including in the downstairs Theatre Too space, where the company presents small, intimate shows and he expects to continue productions by the youths in the company's Musical Theatre Academy, he plans to do a lot of listening and considering about the best use of that venue.

Schmidt, who worked with Alder for more than 10 years as an artist-in-residence, will also continue to serve as the co-founder and executive artistic director of The Drama Club with his wife, actress and teacher Lydia Mackay, the Drama Club's producing artistic director. Together and with a close group of artistic associates, they continue to generate new work for The Drama Club. Schmidt says he'll be exploring ways that Theatre Three can nurture artistic talent the way the company did when it became the home for three future Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights: Henley, Doug Wright and Tracy Letts.

Schmidt has performed, directed or designed at Dallas Theater Center, Undermain Theatre, Echo Theatre and Shakespeare Dallas and helped bring the world premiere of the musical On the Eve, a time-travel musical featuring music by Home by Hovercraft's Seth and Shawn Magill, which Schmidt directed, to Theatre Three in 2014. The show received a staged reading in the National Alliance of Musical Theatre's 27th annual Festival of New Musicals at Off Broadway's New World Stages in October 2015.

In 2014, he also received acclaim for directing Wright's 2013 Broadway musical, Hands on a Hardbody, at Theatre Three. Wright had adapted the book for the show from a 1997 documentary about a Longview contest in which the last contestant to keep a hand on a truck wins it. Amanda Green and Trey Anastasio wrote the score.

This season at Theatre Three, Schmidt starred as an actor son of a novelist in Theresa Rebeck's The Novelist.

Jeffrey Schmidt, as Ethan, performs during a dress rehearsal of The Novelist at Theatre Three in Dallas. (File Photo/Jae S. Lee)

Schmidt grew up in the small town of Whitehouse, just south of Tyler. He started out studying architecture at the University of North Texas and switched to theater, where set design became one of his specialties.

Schmidt says he's looking forward to the challenge and notes that while Whitehouse is a small town in East Texas, he finds it an auspicious sign that there's another theater person from that same town making ripples — a former classmate of his, Judson Jones, who is serving as artistic director of Theatre East in New York City.

"I have taken a scenic route of emotions from terrified to excited to optimistic," Schmidt says. "Right now, I feel really confident that I'm going to be able to do justice to the theater and to the community. I want Theatre Three to be a leader in the community, and I want us to reflect what's happening in the world in a way that doesn't pander or preach."